The Bluff

by Ralph Rice

“While you’re up.” 

She hated the way he’d do that in front of other people every chance he got. She grabbed two beers from the fridge and shook his. She gave him a sweet smile as she set it down in front of him. He had the extra time to think while she was in the kitchen. Two pair.

“Check.”

Bill reminded him there were no checks and raises.

Tom said, “Yes there are.”

The two women just put their cards down and looked at each other.

“It’s a friendly game man.”

“Dealers choice is dealers choice.”

“You should have said that before you dealt.”

Tom muttered, “Baby.” Then pulled the tab on his beer.

In the apartment upstairs, Alan inserted the tape and adjusted the volume. Ready. He hit record on one machine and play on the other. He walked over to the peephole in the door.

Carla tried to seem surprised.  She opened her eyes wide and put her hand over her mouth to cover the smile. Tom wiped his face, then glared at her. There was a very long pause while neither of them made a move to go for something to clean the mess forming on the table. When she realized neither of them were going to get up, Pam went to the kitchen for a towel. Tom dried his cards on his shirt.

The scream startled the hell out of them.  They all looked toward the ceiling at once. It froze them. There were some loud thumps and then the scream changed from just a shriek to, “Help!” “Help me!” This continued for twenty seconds and then there was silence.

”Jesus.” mumbled Tom.

He jumped up and headed out the door with Bill right behind him. Carla went to the phone and dialed 921, then 811, then 911. Pam just stood still, and then she began to cry.

When Tom made the hallway on the floor above, there was no sign of anything. He stopped suddenly, then Bill bumped right into him from behind. He did not even feel it.  He focused on the door of the apartment just above his at the end of the hallway.  He started right for the door. Bill stopped and watched. Tom began pounding on the door. Bill thought of the worst. A madman is going to burst out of that door and kill us. He thought of the gun in his apartment four miles away.  He took a step forward, toward Tom, then reconsidered. He took a step back toward the stairway. He paused, then took a couple baby steps to either side while he watched his friend pound on the door.

Tom listened at the door. Silence. He knocked again while calling out, “Hey! Everything   alright in there?” He felt stupid as soon as he’d said it. He looked back toward Bill. Fucking guy was doing a little dance in the hallway. To Tom he looked like a little boy who had to pee.

”Go get a cop.” he called to Bill.

Bill nodded and disappeared down the stairs.

Alan marked the time. He hit rewind, then stop, on the one machine. He made sure the  mike on the other recorder was pointed at the door. He sank into his favorite chair. He poured some wine.

Tom thought of the Glock he kept under the mattress. His heart was still pounding. Seconds became eternity. There was not a peep from inside.

”Anyone there?”

It was all he could think of to say. He backed slowly away from the door. Get the gun, come right back.  He turned and ran. The hallway, the entire building was silent. No other doors were open.

Carla’s was one of seven calls describing a blood-curdling scream. There were twenty telephones within earshot. Over forty people could hear it. This was an affluent neighborhood. Restored brownstones that brought high rents or went condo. The call went out as unknown trouble. Two patrol cars took it right away. The first called dispatch to say on the scene in six and a half minutes. The second was thirty seconds behind.

Carla had this feeling she had just ordered a pizza. The dispatcher had spoken to her as if she were a child. She gave the specifics, then hung up feeling miffed. Pam was still crying. Bill burst into the apartment. He asked if she had called police. Carla just gave him a blank look then asked, “Where’s Tom?” Bill went over to his wife and hugged her. Pam cried louder. Carla went to the bedroom, snatched up the edge of the mattress, grabbed the gun, chambered a round, and started for the door. Tom went for the doorknob as she opened it. Their heads collided and Carla accidentally squeezed the trigger when she fell back from the head butt. The gun fired into the floor. Carla dropped the weapon as if it were a spider. Tom did a great dance move the instant the gun fired. He ducked a full second later. Carla cowered as if the damn thing might fire again.

Tom took a deep breath, snatched the weapon off the floor, then raced back out the door and up the stairs. Pam would have screamed, but Bill had her in a bear hug that tightened in-voluntarily with the gunshot. She could only utter, “Mmmmph.”

Police dispatch received five calls of shots fired at the same address within the next two minutes. The responding officers were updated. Murphy was twenty-four. He beat his partner by a mile in the race up the stairs. They had both sides of the doorway. Carla had given good, concise directions.  When shots fired went out, two more patrol cars went en route. Murphy banged on the door while his partner panted. No response, nothing. He banged some more while yelling, “Police department.”

In that instant, Tom crested the stairs with Glock in hand.  Murphy leveled his service  weapon at him yelling, “Drop it!”

Tom froze.

He raised his hands, gun still in the right hand. Murphy and his partner both crouched, now directing their weapons down the hallway, away from the suspect door. Tom had to think harder than he ever had before. His mind clicked, couldn’t fire.

Murphy realized this could be a vice cop who heard the call.

”Are you on the job?” he called.

Tom was trying to decide whether to drop the weapon or set it down. He did not take his eyes off the guns aimed at him. He was so scared, Murphy’s question didn’t even register.

Alan set the wine glass down. He walked casually to the door, then paused.

The second unit to arrive on the scene was Pete and Laurie. They dashed into the front entrance of the building and up the stairs. Pete had called in to report that they were on the scene. Laurie was a couple stairs ahead as they went right to the correct floor just after Tom had. They crested the stairs. There was a civilian, gun in hand; two officers had a bead on him. Both Pete and Laurie yelled in unison, “Behind you!” “Drop the weapon!”

Carla was embarrassed and angry. Bill could not get his wife to stop crying. He did lighten his grip on her. When he let go to start for the door, she grabbed him in a reverse bear hug.  She sobbed and breathed, “Noooooo!” Carla went to the kitchen for a large knife. She left the apartment and headed up the stairs after her husband.

Laurie heard the footsteps behind her. She knew it was backup. Pete had aim on this gunman’s head. He could see the cops behind him. Laurie turned and saw a woman with a kitchen knife advancing behind her and Pete. Murphy and his partner could see the two cops behind their gunman. This guy did not respond. He did not badge them, he did not put the gun down.

When shots fired goes on the radio, everyone who can, runs for it. The third unit to show at this scene went up the stairs right after Carla. The two of them came upon a woman with a kitchen knife advancing on two officers. One cop, Laurie had her gun on the knife holder, the other, Pete, was looking in the opposite direction!

”Freeze!” they yelled.

Pete, an experienced officer, knew he had to get out of the line of fire from the two cops on the other side of this gunman in front of him. He heard the yell behind him. His glance darted to his partner, Laurie. She was looking in the opposite direction of the gunman!

Tom was frozen.

Murphy and his partner did that number where you crouch real low against the wall. It’d probably be something you would do if you thought you could completely disappear. Murphy couldn’t believe what he was seeing. There was this gunman and the two uniforms behind him. First one, then the other fellow officers just turned their backs!

Alan opened the door without checking the peephole. ”Yes?” he said. Murphy and his  partner did a quick turnaround to see him. Their eyes flashed back to the gunman. Murphy saw the wine glass in his hand, then re-focused on the gunman in the opposite direction. His partner reacted identically. Tom lowered his right hand to set the gun on the floor as he turned his back to Murphy and his partner.

Laurie’s partner screamed, “Drop it!” He had his weapon indexed. Tunnel vision. Three hundred sixty degrees worth. Pete just saw weapons. His head now flip-flopped back and forth between the knife holding woman below on the stairs behind him, and the gunman ahead. Laurie, right by his side, was about to pull the trigger while she faced the opposite direction. Problem was, when she looked to Pete, and he to her, they could not decide right away. Weapons holding suspects on either side of them. Gun pointing police behind each suspect. Get out of the line of fire, decide whether or not to fire. Pick a direction. Pete and Laurie, just for a few seconds, did the weirdest little dance you can imagine. Something kinda like a bird mating dance. Big, scared birds with guns.

Tom lowered the gun to the floor as his head toggled back and forth between the two cops in front and the two behind. When he raised his hands in surrender just as the apartment door in question opened, all four cops turned away from him. He got dizzy. He collapsed against the wall and slid down to his butt on the floor. Carla made a perfect O with her mouth as she dropped the knife. She was completely shocked when she was tackled from behind.

Alan, as he opened the door, felt smug and a little drunk. He’d heard the gunshot, the yelling. Some time ago he’d just been sitting on a subway reading. Two punks walked up to him and asked for spare change. He had been rude. Coulda said no politely, did not have to throw in the, “Get a job.” Alan got smacked around right in front of ten people who did not lift a finger to help. Goodbye wallet, pride and temper. Cops had made him feel like a petulant child. He fumed, loathed, plotted.

Eighteen cops arrived on this scene. No one got arrested. No one got hurt except Bill. He was badly scratched by his hysterical wife as he tried to leave the apartment to help Tom and Carla.

In the apartment below Tom and Carla’s, where the accidental shot had come through the ceiling and lodged in a table, lived Greta. When the police checked on her, she had no idea what had happened. She liked the television real loud. Television was pretty much seventy nine year old Greta’s whole life. Gunshots were actually pretty normal to her. A knock on her door from a human being was very unusual and scary.

Pete and Laurie were pals in addition to working together. Every now and then, when they greeted each other, they’d do this brief little unusual looking dance. No one ever questioned the strange dance. It coulda been country line dancing, maybe just burn out.

So happens Alan did get an idea for a thesis in his college course-work after the subway incident. A sort of lab experiment if you will. A sociology major, one with tape recorders and a bitter attitude. Those sheep on that train had not lifted a finger to help him. The cops did not care. The thesis was a good one, which included actual dialog. (Taped and reported word for word.) His college professor actually applauded him in front of the rest of the class. The subject of this thesis was originally to have been apathy toward crime in a large city.

Alan had to do some quick thinking after this incident. The one cop named Murphy nearly punched him out for no reason! What these cops were doing to the man and the woman in the hallway was kind of a mystery to Alan. Why the hell he had heard a gunshot? He overheard one cop talking to another about a knife. Some sort of incident right during his experiment! What a co-incidence! The cops sure were crabby, not at all helpful.

Alan just smiled and waved when his professor congratulated him on his thesis. The subject? Random violence.

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